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. 2019 Jan 29;116(5):1471-1474.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1822038116.

Opinion: To curate the molecular past, museums need a carefully considered set of best practices

Rita M Austin  1   2 , Sabrina B Sholts  3 , LaShanda Williams  4   5 , Logan Kistler  6 , Courtney A Hofman  7   2
Affiliations

Opinion: To curate the molecular past, museums need a carefully considered set of best practices

Rita M Austin et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Museum collections staff stand among the anthropological collections at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Museums are responsible for preserving collections and the information they contain for future generations. But in recent years, they’ve been given the increasingly challenging task of curating and conserving biomolecular data. Image credit: Chip Clark (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
The graph shows variation in calculus preservation by collection, illustrating DNA yields (nanograms per milligrams) for four 19th- to 20th-century NMNH anatomical collections and archaeological data (14) ranging from 3,000 BCE to the 19th century CE. All DNA samples were extracted with a widely used ancient DNA protocol (16) and quantified using a Qubit fluorometer. The DNA yields for archaeological collections were generally high with a more varied range of values whereas three of the four historic NMNH anatomical collections have consistently low amounts of DNA.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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